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Chemical substances and the limits of pluralism

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Abstract

In this paper I investigate the relationship between vernacular kind terms and specialist scientific vocabularies. Elsewhere I have developed a defence of realism about the chemical elements as natural kinds. This defence depends on identifying the epistemic interests and theoretical conception of the elements that have suffused chemistry since the mid-eighteenth century. Because of this dependence, it is a discipline-specific defence, and would seem to entail important concessions to pluralism about natural kinds. I argue that making this kind of concession does not imply that vernacular kind terms have independent application conditions. Nor does it preclude us saying that chemists, with their particular epistemic interests, have discovered the underlying nature of water, the stuff that is named and thought about in accordance with the practical interests of everyday life. There are limits to pluralism.

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Notes

  1. I leave aside Kripke, whose version of the direct theory of reference is stronger than is necessary to address these problems in the philosophy of science concerning continuity of reference. For the differences see Putnam (1990) and Hacking (2007).

  2. Note that Ellis does not use his conception of a natural kind for the purpose I have identified here, but the following remarks apply to any attempt to specify the notion of a natural kind through a priori constraints.

  3. For discussion of discreteness in chemistry and its relationship to the issue of reduction, see Le Poidevin (2005), Hendry and Needham (2007).

  4. Caveat: this appearance may well be deceptive. Structure in organic chemistry appears to be a topological, rather than a geometrical notion (see Hendry 2010b, Section 1). What precisely molecular structure is, and even whether there are different notions of structure in different parts of chemistry, are important questions in need of further research.

  5. Species pluralism is, or course, controversial: see Ereshefsky (2010, Section 3).

  6. Perhaps that title is irresistible when one wishes to argue against essentialism about chemical kind terms: see Weisberg (2006).

  7. One may also ask what grade of gold a particular gold ring is: any grade below 24-carat is, of course, a mixture with other metals. ‘This is gold’, said of a 9-carat gold ring, will be said of an object which is mainly non-gold.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Durham University Institute of Advanced Study for granting me a fellowship in the academic year 2009–2010 during which I researched this paper and another one (‘Science and Everyday Life: ‘Water vs. H2O’ Insights 3 (2010)) with which it overlaps. I would also like to thank an anonymous referee and participants in the conference ‘A Philosophy of Science Adequate to Chemistry’ at The University of Sydney for helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Durham University, Durham, UK

    Robin Findlay Hendry

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Hendry, R.F. Chemical substances and the limits of pluralism. Found Chem 14, 55–68 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-011-9145-6

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